Customer Reviews

Quantum Optics: An Introduction (Oxford Master Series in Physics, 6)

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I developed an interest in quantum optics in my last year of undergraduate school but I became discouraged with it since every book that I picked up on the subject was esoteric and too involved for an introduction. It seemed as if NONE of the quantum optics textbooks available were appropriate as an introduction. But then I found this book.

Although not as mathematically intensive as I was hoping for it to be, it explains the physics very well. And although it doesn't compensate for many years of post-graduate study, I was able to better understand research papers in quantum optics due to this book.

The book follows a rather traditional approach to developing quantum optics...first starting off with a discussion of important results in electromagnetism, classical optics, and quantum mechanics...then progressing to the theory of photons (discussing photon statistics, coherent states, and second quantization (with regard to photon number states)). Furthermore, it discusses the essential "backbone" of quantum optics (light-matter interactions) and then applications of quantum optics (quantum computing, quantum entanglement, etc.).

I broke the rules and skipped ahead to the applications section and I must say that everything seems to make sense because of Fox's ability to convey difficult ideas in a simple, easy-to-understand manner.

For anybody just starting to take an interest in quantum optics (like I was at one point), I would strongly suggest this book. It's not as mathematically sophisticated as Loudon's "The Quantum Theory of Light" (which is another must-have for quantum optics), but it's an excellent introduction.

Fox does a great job explaining a complex and dense field from an intuitive and experimental standpoint. I read this book after one term of 1-D introductory Q.M. and everything made sense. The experiments and set-ups described throughout the book are a great tool and were particularly handy since I was using the book to get ready for a summer internship in a Quantum Optics group. The only downside is that the book is quite lacking from a theoretical standpoint. If you are a bit more comfortable with Q.M., say at the level of Shankar, Liboff, or Sakuri, try Knight instead. Nonetheless, this is a great book.

At last we have a text that provides a comprehensive introduction to quantum optics for the beginner - both theory and experiment - and one which takes you through many of the most recent concepts and potential applications in computation, cryptography and teleportation etc.

A feature of this text is the clear explanations and carefully explained jargon - it's NOT just mostly a collection of math like some other supposedly introductory texts.

If you want to find out what quantum optics is all about - this is a great book to start with.

unlike most books on "quantum optics" are too difficult to read, this is a very good book for beginners

This review is not of the book itself, which I have not yet read. It's about the Kindle edition for the iPad. This seems to have been prepared as an afterthought.
It has terrible formatting, with huge spaces in between words and/or symbols. Also, the text seems to have been scanned, and the scanning is so poor that it is almost illegible. This is especially important since this book is filled with mathematical equations, which demand very crisp reproduction. A great disservice to an author who seems to have written an excellent book. It proves that authors need to be vigilant, holding the publisher's feet to the fire.

It's possible that the Kindle edition for Kindle readers doesn't have these problems. It would have been so much better to sell the PDF, though I suspect they don't do that because of copyright concerns as PDF can be shared.

This is our textbook and is easy to understand. It also has answers for the exercise questions. That helps a lot.